Download or read book The Role of Autonomy in DOD Systems Reports on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles UAV Robotics Teleoperation Haptics Centibot Remote Presence UxV DARPA Research and Space and Ground Systems written by U. S. Military and published by . This book was released on 2017-09-16 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The DSB Task Force on the Role of Autonomy in DoD Systems was asked to study relevant technologies, ongoing research, and the current autonomy-relevant plans of the Military Services, to assist the DoD in identifying new opportunities to more aggressively use autonomy in military missions, to anticipate vulnerabilities, and to make recommendations for overcoming operational difficulties and systemic barriers to realizing the full potential of autonomous systems. The Task Force has concluded that, while currently fielded unmanned systems are making positive contributions across DoD operations, autonomy technology is being underutilized as a result of material obstacles within the Department that are inhibiting the broad acceptance of autonomy and its ability to more fully realize the benefits of unmanned systems. Overall, the Task Force found that unmanned systems are making a significant, positive impact on DoD objectives worldwide. However, the true value of these systems is not to provide a direct human replacement, but rather to extend and complement human capability by providing potentially unlimited persistent capabilities, reducing human exposure to life threatening tasks, and with proper design, reducing the high cognitive load currently placed on operators/supervisors.Unmanned systems are proving to have a significant impact on warfare worldwide. The true value of these systems is not to provide a direct human replacement, but rather to extend and complement human capability in a number of ways. These systems extend human reach by providing potentially unlimited persistent capabilities without degradation due to fatigue or lack of attention. Unmanned systems offer the warfighter more options and flexibility to access hazardous environments, work at small scales, or react at speeds and scales beyond human capability. With proper design of bounded autonomous capabilities, unmanned systems can also reduce the high cognitive load currently placed on operators/supervisors. Moreover, increased autonomy can enable humans to delegate those tasks that are more effectively done by computer, including synchronizing activities between multiple unmanned systems, software agents and warfighters--thus freeing humans to focus on more complex decision making.1.0 Executive Summary * 1.1. Misperceptions about Autonomy are Limiting its Adoption * 1.2. Create an Autonomous Systems Reference Framework to Replace "Levels of Autonomy" * 1.3. Technical Challenges Remain, Some Proven Autonomy Capability Underutilized * 1.4. Autonomous Systems Pose Unique Acquisition Challenges * 1.5. Avoid Capability Surprise by Anticipating Adversary Use of Autonomous Systems * 2.0 Operational Benefits of Autonomy * 2.1. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles * 2.2. Unmanned Ground Systems * 2.3. Unmanned Maritime Vehicles * 2.4. Unmanned Space Systems * 2.5. Conclusion * 3.0 Technical Issues of Autonomy * 3.1. Motivation: What Makes Autonomy Hard * 3.2. Defining Levels of Autonomy is Not Useful * 3.3. Autonomous System Reference Framework * 3.4. Needed Technology Development * 3.5. Technical Recommendations * 4.0 Acquisition Issues of Autonomy * 4.1. Requirements and Development * 4.2. Test and Evaluation * 4.3. Transition to Operational Deployment * 5.0 Capability Surprise in Autonomy Technology * 5.1. Overview of Global Unmanned Systems * 5.2. Unmanned Symmetric Adversary Scenarios * 5.3. Value for Asymmetric Adversaries * 5.4. External Vulnerabilities * 5.5. Self-Imposed Vulnerabilities * 5.6. Recommendations . * Appendix A--Details of Operational Benefits by Domain * A.1. Aerial Systems Strategy * A.2. Maritime Systems * A.3. Ground Systems * A.4. Space Systems * Appendix B--Bibliography * Appendix C--Task Force Terms of Reference * Appendix D--Task Force Membership * Appendix E--Task Force Briefings * Appendix F--Glossary

Download or read book Role of Autonomy in DOD Systems Unmanned Aerial Vehicles UAV Robotics Teleoperation Haptics Centibot Swarmanoid LANdroid Remote Presence UxV DARPA Research Space and Ground Systems written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Role of Autonomy in Dod Systems written by Department of Defense Defense Science Board and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-03-07 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unmanned systems are proving to have a significant impact on warfare worldwide. The true value of these systems is not to provide a direct human replacement, but rather to extend and complement human capability in a number of ways. These systems extend human reach by providing potentially unlimited persistent capabilities without degradation due to fatigue or lack of attention. Unmanned systems offer the warfighter more options and flexibility to access hazardous environments, work at small scales, or react at speeds and scales beyond human capability. With proper design of bounded autonomous capabilities, unmanned systems can also reduce the high cognitive load currently placed on operators/supervisors. Moreover, increased autonomy can enable humans to delegate those tasks that are more effectively done by computer, including synchronizing activities between multiple unmanned systems, software agents and warfighters—thus freeing humans to focus on more complex decision making. While the potential of autonomy is great, there have been many obstacles to general broad acceptance of unmanned systems, and, specifically, the autonomous capabilities needed to realize the benefits of autonomy in military applications. Most Department of Defense (DoD) deployments of unmanned systems have been motivated by the pressing needs of conflict, particularly the threat of improvised explosive devices and the need for persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) data collection. To date, most of the demonstrated benefits of autonomous systems have been in air or ground applications, but there exists no reason that they could not be effective in maritime and space missions as well. The Task Force was charged to assist the DoD in understanding and preparing to take maximum practical advantage of advances in autonomy by reviewing relevant technologies, ongoing research and the current autonomy-relevant plans of the Military Services. The Department asked the Task Force to identify new opportunities to more aggressively use autonomy in military missions, to anticipate vulnerabilities and to make recommendations for overcoming operational difficulties and systemic barriers to realizing the full potential of autonomous systems.

Download or read book Task Force Report written by United States. Defense Science Board. Task Force on the Role of Autonomy in DoD Systems and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unmanned systems are proving to have a significant impact on warfare worldwide. The true value of these systems is not to provide a direct human replacement, but rather to extend and complement human capability in a number of ways. These systems extend human reach by providing potentially unlimited persistent capabilities without degradation due to fatigue or lack of attention. Unmanned systems offer the warfighter more options and flexibility to access hazardous environments, work at small scales, or react at speeds and scales beyond human capability. With proper design of bounded autonomous capabilities, unmanned systems can also reduce the high cognitive load currently placed on operators/supervisors. Moreover, increased autonomy can enable humans to delegate those tasks that are more effectively done by computer, including synchronizing activities between multiple unmanned systems, software agents and warfighters -- thus freeing humans to focus on more complex decision making. The Task Force was charged to assist the DoD in understanding and preparing to take maximum practical advantage of advances in autonomy by reviewing relevant technologies, ongoing research and the current autonomy-relevant plans of the Military Services. The Department asked the Task Force to identify new opportunities to more aggressively use autonomy in military missions, to anticipate vulnerabilities and to make recommendations for overcoming operational difficulties and systemic barriers to realizing the full potential of autonomous systems.

Download or read book Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2005-08-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been used in military operations for more than 60 years, with torpedoes, cruise missiles, satellites, and target drones being early examples.1 They have also been widely used in the civilian sector-for example, in the disposal of explosives, for work and measurement in radioactive environments, by various offshore industries for both creating and maintaining undersea facilities, for atmospheric and undersea research, and by industry in automated and robotic manufacturing. Recent military experiences with AVs have consistently demonstrated their value in a wide range of missions, and anticipated developments of AVs hold promise for increasingly significant roles in future naval operations. Advances in AV capabilities are enabled (and limited) by progress in the technologies of computing and robotics, navigation, communications and networking, power sources and propulsion, and materials. Autonomous Vehicles in Support of Naval Operations is a forward-looking discussion of the naval operational environment and vision for the Navy and Marine Corps and of naval mission needs and potential applications and limitations of AVs. This report considers the potential of AVs for naval operations, operational needs and technology issues, and opportunities for improved operations.

Download or read book Lethal Autonomous Weapons written by Jai Galliott and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Because of the increasing use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, also commonly known as drones) in various military and para-military (i.e., CIA) settings, there has been increasing debate in the international community as to whether it is morally and ethically permissible to allow robots (flying or otherwise) the ability to decide when and where to take human life. In addition, there has been intense debate as to the legal aspects, particularly from a humanitarian law framework. In response to this growing international debate, the United States government released the Department of Defense (DoD) 3000.09 Directive (2011), which sets a policy for if and when autonomous weapons would be used in US military and para-military engagements. This US policy asserts that only "human-supervised autonomous weapon systems may be used to select and engage targets, with the exception of selecting humans as targets, for local defense ...". This statement implies that outside of defensive applications, autonomous weapons will not be allowed to independently select and then fire upon targets without explicit approval from a human supervising the autonomous weapon system. Such a control architecture is known as human supervisory control, where a human remotely supervises an automated system (Sheridan 1992). The defense caveat in this policy is needed because the United States currently uses highly automated systems for defensive purposes, e.g., Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar (C-RAM) systems and Patriot anti-missile missiles. Due to the time-critical nature of such environments (e.g., soldiers sleeping in barracks within easy reach of insurgent shoulder-launched missiles), these automated defensive systems cannot rely upon a human supervisor for permission because of the short engagement times and the inherent human neuromuscular lag which means that even if a person is paying attention, there is approximately a half-second delay in hitting a firing button, which can mean the difference for life and death for the soldiers in the barracks. So as of now, no US UAV (or any robot) will be able to launch any kind of weapon in an offensive environment without human direction and approval. However, the 3000.09 Directive does contain a clause that allows for this possibility in the future. This caveat states that the development of a weapon system that independently decides to launch a weapon is possible but first must be approved by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD(P)); the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (USD(AT&L)); and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not all stakeholders are happy with this policy that leaves the door open for what used to be considered science fiction. Many opponents of such uses of technologies call for either an outright ban on autonomous weaponized systems, or in some cases, autonomous systems in general (Human Rights Watch 2013, Future of Life Institute 2015, Chairperson of the Informal Meeting of Experts 2016). Such groups take the position that weapons systems should always be under "meaningful human control," but do not give a precise definition of what this means. One issue in this debate that often is overlooked is that autonomy is not a discrete state, rather it is a continuum, and various weapons with different levels of autonomy have been in the US inventory for some time. Because of these ambiguities, it is often hard to draw the line between automated and autonomous systems. Present-day UAVs use the very same guidance, navigation and control technology flown on commercial aircraft. Tomahawk missiles, which have been in the US inventory for more than 30 years, are highly automated weapons with accuracies of less than a meter. These offensive missiles can navigate by themselves with no GPS, thus exhibiting some autonomy by today's definitions. Global Hawk UAVs can find their way home and land on their own without any human intervention in the case of a communication failure. The growth of the civilian UAV market is also a critical consideration in the debate as to whether these technologies should be banned outright. There is a $144.38B industry emerging for the commercial use of drones in agricultural settings, cargo delivery, first response, commercial photography, and the entertainment industry (Adroit Market Research 2019) More than $100 billion has been spent on driverless car development (Eisenstein 2018) in the past 10 years and the autonomy used in driverless cars mirrors that inside autonomous weapons. So, it is an important distinction that UAVs are simply the platform for weapon delivery (autonomous or conventional), and that autonomous systems have many peaceful and commercial uses independent of military applications"--

Download or read book Autonomy Research for Civil Aviation written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2014-07-23 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The development and application of increasingly autonomous (IA) systems for civil aviation is proceeding at an accelerating pace, driven by the expectation that such systems will return significant benefits in terms of safety, reliability, efficiency, affordability, and/or previously unattainable mission capabilities. IA systems range from current automatic systems such as autopilots and remotely piloted unmanned aircraft to more highly sophisticated systems that are needed to enable a fully autonomous aircraft that does not require a pilot or human air traffic controllers. These systems, characterized by their ability to perform more complex mission-related tasks with substantially less human intervention for more extended periods of time, sometimes at remote distances, are being envisioned for aircraft and for air traffic management and other ground-based elements of the national airspace system. Civil aviation is on the threshold of potentially revolutionary improvements in aviation capabilities and operations associated with IA systems. These systems, however, face substantial barriers to integration into the national airspace system without degrading its safety or efficiency. Autonomy Research for Civil Aviation identifies key barriers and suggests major elements of a national research agenda to address those barriers and help realize the benefits that IA systems can make to crewed aircraft, unmanned aircraft systems, and ground-based elements of the national airspace system. This report develops a set of integrated and comprehensive technical goals and objectives of importance to the civil aeronautics community and the nation. Autonomy Research for Civil Aviation will be of interest to U.S. research organizations, industry, and academia who have a role in meeting these goals.

Download or read book Intelligent Autonomy of UAVs written by Yasmina Bestaoui Sebbane and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2018-03-14 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligent Autonomy of UAVs: Advanced Missions and Future Use provides an approach to the formulation of the fundamental task typical to any mission and provides guidelines of how this task can be solved by different generic robotic problems. As such, this book aims to provide a systems engineering approach to UAV projects, discovering the real problems that need to be resolved independently of the application. After an introduction to the rapidly evolving field of aerial robotics, the book presents topics such as autonomy, mission analysis, human-UAV teams, homogeneous and heterogeneous UAV teams, and finally, UAV-UGV teams. It then covers generic robotic problems such as orienteering and coverage. The book next introduces deployment, patrolling, and foraging, while the last part of the book tackles an important application: aerial search, tracking, and surveillance. This book is meant for both scientists and practitioners. For practitioners, it presents existing solutions that are categorized according to various missions: surveillance and reconnaissance, 3D mapping, urban monitoring, precision agriculture, forestry, disaster assessment and monitoring, security, industrial plant inspection, etc. For scientists, it provides an overview of generic robotic problems such as coverage and orienteering; deployment, patrolling and foraging; search, tracking, and surveillance. The design and analysis of algorithms raise a unique combination of questions from many fields, including robotics, operational research, control theory, and computer science.

Download or read book Autonomy on Land and Sea and in the Air and Space written by National Academy of Engineering and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2018-07-31 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autonomy is multidisciplinary, multicultural, and global in its development and applications. Autonomous vehicles rely on communications, artificial intelligence, sensors, virtual and enhanced reality, big data, security, and many other technologies. Each year the annual meeting of the National Academy of Engineering highlights an engineering theme that is quickly developing in the world. The theme of the 2017 meeting was autonomy on land and sea and in the air and space. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the meeting.

Download or read book Robots Drones UAVs and UGVs for Operation and Maintenance written by Diego Galar and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2020-05-07 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Industrial assets (such as railway lines, roads, pipelines) are usually huge, span long distances, and can be divided into clusters or segments that provide different levels of functionality subject to different loads, degradations and environmental conditions, and their efficient management is necessary. The aim of the book is to give comprehensive understanding about the use of autonomous vehicles (context of robotics) for the utilization of inspection and maintenance activities in industrial asset management in different accessibility and hazard levels. The usability of deploying inspection vehicles in an autonomous manner is explained with the emphasis on integrating the total process. Key Features Aims for solutions for maintenance and inspection problems provided by robotics, drones, unmanned air vehicles and unmanned ground vehicles Discusses integration of autonomous vehicles for inspection and maintenance of industrial assets Covers the industrial approach to inspection needs and presents what is needed from the infrastructure end Presents the requirements for robot designers to design an autonomous inspection and maintenance system Includes practical case studies from industries

Download or read book DOD s Use of Remotely Piloted Vehicle Technology Offers Opportunities for Saving Lives and Dollars written by United States. General Accounting Office and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Unmanned aircraft systems new DOD programs can learn from past efforts to craft better and less risky acquisition strategies report to the Committee on Armed Services U S Senate written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Brave New Warfare Autonomy in Lethal Uavs Arguments for and Against Autonomous Aircraft and Ucavs Need for Humans Or Executive Oversi written by U. S. Military and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-03-08 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department of Defense (DoD) is making significant strides to develop and deploy unmanned vehicles in a variety of environments. Specifically, the Secretary of the Navy is sponsoring a new program, Consortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems Education and Research ("CRUSER"), at the Naval Postgraduate School to enhance the ability to address unmanned vehicle research in a systematic manner. The area of research in this thesis strives to position the technological advancements within an ethical framework that will guide the development and use of these technologies. Autonomous platforms may bring significant advantages and enhance our abilities for mission accomplishment. This project concludes that they are best deployed in conventional conflicts, and may have more limited and problematic uses during irregular warfare and COIN operations. Laws pertaining to the deployment of autonomous and unmanned platforms are unclear and need to be strengthened on an international scale. Furthermore, the questions regarding what are permissible uses of autonomous platforms should also include future operators and personnel involved in the acquisition and engineering of these platforms, and should not be left solely in the hands of lawyers and diplomats. The combination of autonomy and lethality is found to work best when limited to the targeting of an enemy's weapons systems and aircraft in highly scripted environments rather than enemy combatants and personnel themselves.This compilation includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.I. Introduction * A. Research Questions * B. Significance Of Research * C. Organization And Methodology * II. Remotely Piloted Aircraft * A. Background * B. Moving Forward With Unmanned Platforms * C. Joint Air Doctrine And UAVs * D. Dilemmas With Current UCAVs * III. Autonomy * A. Laws Of Armed Conflict * B. Ethical Considerations * 1. Just War Tradition * 2. Attribution * 3. Arguments for the Introduction of Autonomy * a. Protecting the Lives of American Soldiers * b. Mission Accomplishment and Cost Effectiveness * c. Discrimination and Proportionality * 4. Arguments Against the Introduction of Autonomy * a. The Threshold for the Risk of War and Last Resort * b. Proliferation and Theft * C. Tactical Environments * 1. Conventional * 2. Nonconventional * D. Weapon Considerations * Iv. The Professional Military Ethic * A. How We Conduct Our Wars * B. Moral Disengagement * V. Summary, Conclusions, and Recommendations * A. Summary * B. Conclusions and Recommendations * 1. To What Extent Do Contemporary Understandings of Military Ethics and the LOAC Address Machine Autonomy in Conjunction with the Use of Lethal Force? * a. Conclusion * b. Recommendations * 2. What Permissible Uses of Autonomous UCAVs Might Be Envisioned Within the Present Framework of Warfighting? * a. Conclusion * b. Recommendations * 3. Is It Necessary to Retain a Human Presence, or Executive Oversight, in the UCAV "Kill Chain?" * a. Conclusion * b. Recommendations

Download or read book Autonomous Navigation and Teleoperation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Using Monocular Vision written by Diego Alberto Mercado-Ravell and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present document addresses, theoretically and experimentally, the most relevant topics for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in autonomous and semi-autonomous navigation. According with the multidisciplinary nature of the studied problems, a wide range of techniques and theories are covered in the fields of robotics, automatic control, computer science, computer vision and embedded systems, among others. As part of this thesis, two different experimental platforms were developed in order to explore and evaluate various theories and techniques of interest for autonomous navigation. The first prototype is a quadrotor specially designed for outdoor applications and was fully developed in our lab. The second testbed is composed by a non expensive commercial quadrotor kind AR. Drone, wireless connected to a ground station equipped with the Robot Operating System (ROS), and specially intended to test computer vision algorithms and automatic control strategies in an easy, fast and safe way. In addition, this work provides a study of data fusion techniques looking to enhance the UAVs pose estimation provided by commonly used sensors. Two strategies are evaluated in particular, an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and a Particle Filter (PF). Both estimators are adapted for the system under consideration, taking into account noisy measurements of the UAV position, velocity and orientation. Simulations show the performance of the developed algorithms while adding noise from real GPS (Global Positioning System) measurements. Safe and accurate navigation for either autonomous trajectory tracking or haptic teleoperation of quadrotors is presented as well. A second order Sliding Mode (2-SM) control algorithm is used to track trajectories while avoiding frontal collisions in autonomous flight. The time-scale separation of the translational and rotational dynamics allows us to design position controllers by giving desired references in the roll and pitch angles, which is suitable for quadrotors equipped with an internal attitude controller. The 2-SM control allows adding robustness to the closed-loop system. A Lyapunov based analysis probes the system stability. Vision algorithms are employed to estimate the pose of the vehicle using only a monocular SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) fused with inertial measurements. Distance to potential obstacles is detected and computed using the sparse depth map from the vision algorithm. For teleoperation tests, a haptic device is employed to feedback information to the pilot about possible collisions, by exerting opposite forces. The proposed strategies are successfully tested in real-time experiments, using a low-cost commercial quadrotor. Also, conception and development of a Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) able to safely interact with human users by following them autonomously, is achieved in the present work. Once a face is detected by means of a Haar cascade classifier, it is tracked applying a Kalman Filter (KF), and an estimation of the relative position with respect to the face is obtained at a high rate. A linear Proportional Derivative (PD) controller regulates the UAV's position in order to keep a constant distance to the face, employing as well the extra available information from the embedded UAV's sensors. Several experiments were carried out through different conditions, showing good performance even under disadvantageous scenarios like outdoor flight, being robust against illumination changes, wind perturbations, image noise and the presence of several faces on the same image. Finally, this thesis deals with the problem of implementing a safe and fast transportation system using an UAV kind quadrotor with a cable suspended load. The objective consists in transporting the load from one place to another, in a fast way and with minimum swing in the cable.

Download or read book Aviation Artificial Intelligence written by U S Military and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-05-09 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Army prepares itself to fight in the Multi-Domain Battle environment, it must assume that enemies will contest every domain and units will operate in more austere conditions, both physically and informationally. Increased sensor capabilities, proliferated and dispersed air defense systems, and contested electromagnetic spectrums challenge the air domain and severely restrict the freedom of action to which the United States has become accustomed. As the Army invests in research initiatives to mitigate the threats posed by peer competitors and develop technologies that return a marked advantage for the joint forces, Artificial Intelligence and increasing autonomy offer significant possibilities. Simultaneously, however, increasing sensor capabilities threaten remotely piloted and autonomous systems and their significant electromagnetic emissions. With aviation assets operating across multiple areas of operations within the theater, it is critical that they possess the appropriate technologies and effects to mitigate threat capabilities and increase their survivability.This compilation includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.1. Introduction * 2. Literature Review: Why Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence? * 3. Defining the Future Environment * 4. Methodology * 5. Current Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Vulnerabilities * 6. Autonomous Aircraft Untethered * 7. Inherent Risks of Piloted Aircraft * 8. Operational Benefits of Autonomous Aircraft * 9. Human and AI Teaming * 10. Framing the Future Scenario * 11. Multi-Domain Battle's Effect on Current UAVs * 12. Multi-Domain Battle's Effect on Autonomous Aircraft * 13. Multi-Domain Battle's Effect on Human/AI Teaming * 14. Recommendations and ConclusionTo be any more efficient than a normal vehicle, autonomous vehicles must possess a certain degree of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Having vehicles that perform their intended functions with little or no guidance from a human controller is highly desirable for any battlefield commander. A system that can execute a set of pre-determined tasks by itself frees a human from the need to control it, and potentially removes that human from significant risk. The potential benefits of Artificial Intelligence extend beyond autonomous operations, including rapid calculations and decision aiding, and management of large amounts of information. The inclusion of Artificial Intelligence and autonomy into the aviation field is arguably not new but has a profound impact, nonetheless. Aircraft avionics and flight control systems have long included various forms of autopilot or flight control coupling that allows the flight computer to manipulate the control surfaces and thereby control the aircraft. Likewise, onboard flight management systems assist pilots in making calculations to determine appropriate flight times, speeds, and distances. Emerging technologies, however, are introducing capabilities that require significantly smaller amounts of pilot or controller input. Department of Defense (DoD) initiatives in multiple services are testing autonomous aircraft for resupply and sustainment missions. The Lockheed-Martin corporation, working with the U.S. Marine Corps, conducted extended field-testing of a semi-autonomous Kaman K-MAX utility helicopter in Afghanistan, opening the door to many other potential applications for unmanned rotary-wing aircraft.

Download or read book Designing Unmanned Systems with Greater Autonomy written by Daniel Gonzales and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many current unmanned systems (UxSs) employ different communication systems and have limited autonomy, which limit information sharing with warfighters and other UxSs. This report identifies ways to address these limitations.

Download or read book Report of the Defense Science Board Summer Study on Autonomy written by Ruth David and published by . This book was released on 2016-09-28 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study reviewed the applicability of autonomy across a broad array of Department of Defense (DOD) missions and concluded that there are both substantial operational benefits and potential perils associated with its use. Autonomy delivers significant military value, including opportunities to reduce the number of warfighters in harm's way, increase the quality and speed of decisions in time-critical operations, and enable new missions that would otherwise be impossible. Autonomy also delivers significant value across a diverse array of global markets. Both enabling technologies and commercial applications are advancing rapidly in response to market opportunities. This study concludes that DOD must accelerate its exploitation of autonomy -- both to realize the potential military value and to remain ahead of adversaries who also will exploit its operational benefits. Figures and tables. This is a print on demand report.